Colors, Perceptual Variation, and Science.

Arguments from perceptual variation challenge the view that colors are objective properties of objects, properties that objects have independent of how they are perceived. This paper attempts, first, to diagnose one central reason why arguments from perceptual variation seem especially challenging f...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Erkenntnis Vol. 89; no. 3; pp. 1157 - 1182
Main Authors: Watkins, Michael, Shech, Elay
Format: Article
Published: Springer Nature Mar2024
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Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
Description
Summary:Arguments from perceptual variation challenge the view that colors are objective properties of objects, properties that objects have independent of how they are perceived. This paper attempts, first, to diagnose one central reason why arguments from perceptual variation seem especially challenging for objectivists about color. Second, we offer a response to this challenge, claiming that once we focus on determinate colors rather than the determinables they determine, a response to arguments from perceptual variation becomes apparent. Third, our nominal opponents are relationalist (like Cohen in The red and the real: an essay on color ontology, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009) and we will argue that the main argument for rejecting objectivism commits the relationalist to a position that is more radical than the one he would wish to endorse. Fourth, we suggest that insight into which properties could be relational may be found by looking to our best scientific theories.